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The power of the latino vote

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Mitt Romney this week received a boost from his deft performance at the first presidential debate of this election.

The pundits have scored it for Mr Romney and the win has injected some much-needed enthusiasm into the campaign.

But it still might not be enough to win over enough votes to put him into the White House, and it's unlikely to sway one bloc of voters that everyone recognises are growing in importance, but who are overwhelmingly voting for the Democrats.

From Washington, our North America correspondent, Michael Brissenden.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: In amongst the bowls full of unguarded truth spoken by Mitt Romney at that exclusive $50,000-a-plate dinner in Florida, there is one glaring recognition of what is becoming a real threat to the long-term survival of the Republican Party.

Don't worry about all the bon mots that will be reheated from that night and put into play for this election cycle.

Mitt Romney might be caviar-coated toast, but even he recognises that his party has a structural ideological problem that if they don't address soon could well keep them out of the White House forever.

Since that video was aired, much of the media discussion has been around Mitt Romney's declaration that it wasn't his job to worry about the 47 per cent of voters who don't pay tax and who believe they're victims with an overblown sense of entitlement to government support.

But not much has been said about that other percentage of 'voterland' that he and his Republican stable mates appear to be not worrying too much about either at this stage - Latinos - even though Mitt Romney himself acknowledges the growing political significance of this country's fastest-growing demographic.

As the waiters (who may or may not have been Latino, but who certainly were in the 47 per cent bracket referred to) looked on, Mitt told the gathering of wealthy donors that his father was born in Mexico, but that unfortunately he'd been born of American parents who just happened to be living in Mexico.

If, however, he had been born of Mexican parents then he said, "I'd have a better shot of winning this."

He said it jokingly, "But it'd be helpful", he said, "if they'd been Latino."

And he knows it would be helpful because the Latino vote is becoming so important.

Many Republicans admit it's the reason why some of the swing states, like Nevada and Colorado, are no longer looking as much like swing states - because Latinos there, and all across the country, are overwhelmingly voting Democratic.

Even Florida has shifted, a state that, because of the older generation of Cuban immigrants, had been solidly posting broad Latino support for the Republican Party.

Now, the younger generation of Cubans are voting for the Democrats, and the new influx of Latinos from elsewhere in Latin America are voting that way too.

It was Ronald Reagan who famously said, "Hispanics are Republicans, they just don't know it yet", way back the 1980s.

He also, by the way, granted a partial amnesty for illegal immigrants during his term. A position that at the moment is a world away from the sort of immigration policy that is championed by a party increasingly captive of the fears and insecurities of its rabid Tea Party wing.

To win the nomination, Mitt Romney has had to bend ever further to their agenda.

He denounced the Dream Act, a bill that would give conditional permanent residency to those brought to this country by their parents when they were children.

He supported Arizona's controversial tough law SB-1070 that allows police to check a person's immigration status at will.

And he also famously declared that "self deportation" was the best way of dealing with undocumented immigrants.

Mitt Romney says what the country needs is a permanent fix to problems posed by and faced by the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country, but he has so far been vague on what that permanent fix might be.

As the Ronald Reagan quote suggests, Latinos should be natural Republicans.

Most are conservative, Catholic and entrepreneurial.

They're here because they believe in the transformational potential of the American dream. But almost every one of them has a relative, or knows someone who has a relative, who is in the country illegally.

Immigration policy is a big deal in the Latino community, and the thing is sensible Republicans know it.

Many privately say this is the last time they'll be able to go to an election with the immigration platform that they have.

They accept that that they need to stop using terms such as 'illegal aliens' and instead start talking about opportunity.